How Craig organized 14,000+ documents in his Google Drive

“Over the years, I’ve started projects multiple times to build a proper, standardized folder structure, but those attempts always stalled or became too cumbersome to maintain.”

Craig Urban · Norway · from his 4.5/5 review on G2

An archive that outlived its own filing system

Craig’s Google Drive holds decades of documents, and almost none of it comes from a workplace. Lately it is overwhelmingly genealogy: scans, spreadsheets, documents, images, and the output of the AI tools he uses to work through them.

The problem was never knowing how he wanted his Google Drive organized. He had built a structure, more than once, each time as a proper project. The problem was keeping up with it.

“Names and folders that made sense 10 years ago don’t anymore.”

Craig Urban · Norway

That is why a personal archive is harder than a company one. Nobody hands it to a colleague, nobody imposes a standard, and the categories drift one reasonable decision at a time. Each attempt was abandoned when keeping it up cost more than the mess did.

Why this Drive was a hard case

Unlike a typical business Google Drive, Craig’s archive contains almost no repetitive document types. A census scan, a parish record, a spreadsheet of dates, a handwritten letter, a page of notes — related by subject, not by shape. There is no template to recognize, only the document in front of you.

“Workplaces have hundreds of documents of the same type. I haven’t — so I’m giving Filently a much harder, different task.”

Craig Urban · Norway

More than fourteen thousand documents have gone through it so far, roughly 80% of what he wants filed.

How Craig uses Filently

1. He described the rules himself. Custom instructions setting out how he wants documents named and where they belong.
2. He adds documents to one folder. Files go into the Filently inbox folder in his Google Drive.
3. Filently files them automatically. Renamed to his convention and moved into the right folder, with no approval step. A census scan, a spreadsheet and a page of notes all come out named the same way.
4. New folders appear when they’re needed. When a document doesn’t fit an existing category, Filently creates the folder for it.

What changed

“It eliminated document chaos and brought true automation to my storage. Instead of spending hours manually renaming, sorting backlogged files, or downloading attachments, the system enforces a standardized structure automatically.”

Craig Urban · Norway · from his 4.5/5 review on G2

Because almost nothing in the archive repeats, new categories keep appearing. Filently creates the folders for them as it goes, so the structure extends itself rather than waiting for Craig to extend it. That is the part his own attempts never survived.

Setting up the rules took some initial work, and Craig didn’t have to do it on his own.

“There is a slight learning curve when initially defining your automated rules and folder setup, but Valentin’s prompt chat support completely eliminated that hurdle for me.”

Craig Urban · Norway · from his 4.5/5 review on G2

Fourteen thousand documents later, the standardized structure he’d tried to build for years is finally there. This time he isn’t the one keeping it up.